KARACHI: Pakistan’s young and energetic cricket team added another feather to its cap with a record 7th five-match series clean sweep by beating Zimbabwe 5-0.
The comprehensive win against Zimbabwe by a margin of 5-0 helped Pakistan surpassed its arch-rival India in the list of teams winning most 5-match ODI series by winning each match of it.
Pakistan’s list of 5-match clean sweeps include wins against Zimbabwe in 2002, Bangladesh in 2003, New Zealand in 2003, Zimbabwe in 2008, Bangladesh in 2008, Sri Lanka in 2017 and Zimbabwe in 2018.
India has six such five-match ODI series win followed by South Africa with five, West Indies, Australia and Sri Lanka with four 5-match series clean sweep.
Pakistan’s opening pair Fakhar Zaman and Imam ul Haq also achieved a unique feat in the series by being the first batting pair to score 600 runs in a bilateral series.
The opening duo added 704 runs as batting partners in 5 innings of the series, which is the most by any batting partner in a bilateral series. No other pair has score more than 590 runs when two teams met for a series.
They also scored 4-century partnerships in the series, jointly the most by a batting pair. The other pair to smash for century partnerships is also from Pakistan – Imran Farhat and Yasir Hameed, against Zimbabwe in 2003.
Batsman Imam ul Haq brought another laurel for Pakistan today by becoming first ever batsman in ODIs to score 4 centuries in 10 innings. Imam, a nephew of batting legend Inzamam, scored his 4th ODI century in 9 innings.
Earlier, the “Fakhar-e-Pakistan” Fakhar Zaman became the first ever batsman in history to complete 1,000 ODI career runs in 18 games. He erased records of Viv Richards, Kevin Pietersen, Quinton de Kock, Babar Azam and Jonathan Trott to become the fastest to a thousand career runs in ODIs.
He also became the first ever player to score 500+ runs in a five-match series. With 515 runs in this series, he is second to Virat Kohli in the list of scoring most runs in a bilateral series. The Indian batsman had scored 558 runs in 6 ODIs against SA.
